


Destrudo

by uumuu



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Implied/Referenced Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 09:38:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3524390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uumuu/pseuds/uumuu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fëanor goes to the Silmarils instead of Mandos after dying. That doesn't end up well for Morgoth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Destrudo

Morgoth noticed too late.

There had been signs, but too blatant for him to pay them any heed, when everything else seemed to conform to his will. The Silmarils had hurt him from the moment he had taken the casket amidst the ruins of Formenos, hands drenched with Finwë’s blood, but the gems were now his own. He had wanted the crown that enclosed them to be burdensome on purpose, so that its weight would distract him from the pain, and the thick layers of wrought iron would protect his head from the scorching. The pain had been constant but dull, and when it had spiked in the instant Fëanor died, he had imputed it to the gems bewailing the passing of their Maker – while he laughed –, and when it soared again as he beheld Fëanor’s eldest wounded and in chains before his throne, he imputed it to the hate in the elf’s eyes. 

He entrusted Maedhros's torture to Sauron, and relished it from a distance. Yet the pain didn’t revert to subdued aching. It grew into a furious throbbing instead, frenzied hammer-strokes which sent racking waves from his forehead throughout his body. The more Maedhros screamed, the harder they hit. 

But that was not the end of it.

Maedhros invoked his father at the height of his agony, crying _atar_ over and over, and he was seized by an overmastering impulse which propelled him to where the elf knelt surrounded by orcs and tormented by Sauron. He clutched Sauron’s neck, against his own will, uncomprehending. He flung him down, heard the sound of his bones being crushed with a glee that was not his own. In the blink of an eye Sauron lay dead – dead at his master’s feet, his body reduced to a pulp and no trace left of his spirit.

Morgoth gawked at Maedhros, who was barely conscious but still glared back, a faint mocking smile on his disfigured face.

The orcs looked alternately at their Master and at the formless puddle of gory matter in quaking disbelief. Morgoth crumbled to his knees under their stunned regards. He wanted to order them to torture Maedhros to death and return his broken body to his brothers. He wanted to say the words, but as he _thought_ of opening his mouth to do it, the pain became akin to a blaze eating him from the inside. He pressed his hands to his face, desperately attempting to muzzle it.

The orcs took Maedhros back to Thangorodrim on their own initiative, but even so their unease barely abated. The elf had to have a secret might. He had howled in torment like all other prisoners, but perhaps his voice was not like all other voices, or perhaps the words he had uttered were words of mastery. They had seen the malign light on their Master’s brow flicker even more sinisterly when they had left his cracked lips. And hadn’t their Master himself slunk back to his throne like a worm slithers out of a corpse, unable to mask his agony?

Morgoth sat on his throne in silence, brooding.

The suspicion which took shape in his mind during those long days marked by wrath and discomfiture and pain, unending searing pain – Maedhros couldn’t have that much influence on the Silmarils, there _had_ to be something else – turned to certainty when Gothmog came to inform him of the arrival of elves from the Grinding Ice, and he, too, was destroyed in the same way Sauron had been.

What wrested control of himself from Morgoth was not merely a seething fury, however. It was vengeance, implacable and very personal, and so Morgoth knew.

Fëanor was there.

Fëanor was now inside the gems he himself had crafted, and had probably been there, in part, from their very conception. The burning which Morgoth had believed to be the effect of Varda’s hallowing proceeded from the elf himself, from his will.

Fëanor had rebuffed Námo’s call. Námo, who had coveted his fëa no less than the Silmarils, decoyed him with memories of his father and the prospect of meeting his mother. He had almost given in. It was a fervent yearning - to be with his parents and finally find some small measure of peace - but his place was with his sons, in war. The Silmarils, born from his heart as much as from his hands, welcomed his fëa like a womb.

Being close to Morgoth was a small price to pay.

Seeing Maedhros suffer was worse than death.

Turning Morgoth’s crown into a prison was the sweetest retaliation. Morgoth tried to take it off, to lock the Silmarils with Fëanor in them somewhere where they couldn’t hurt him anymore, perhaps smash them. The arm he lifted to do it fell back limp at his side, black and withered as his hands.

Angband plunged into turmoil. The balrogs and other maiar knew that something was terribly amiss with their Lord, but hesitated to approach him, for fear of meeting the same end as Sauron and Gothmog. The orcs fretted. Some took advantage of the confusion to flee as far as possible from masters’ whips and orders to fight, to craft a new life for themselves, in turn facilitating the escape of large groups of elven thralls. Among the orcs who remained, a few became convinced that if Maedhros were to die, something awful would befall them no matter where they ran. Orcs were as responsive to fear as they were to might, and had keen senses. Simply glancing at the elf in his torment or catching a note of his wailing filled them with crushing foreboding, until a part of them could take it no longer. They freed Maedhros from the rock, carefully, like they would have handled one of their own babies, and returned him to his brothers, alive.

Morgoth heard Fëanor laugh from within his head, and his joy, his relief harmed him more than his rage.

Seven days later, Carcharoth trotted into the Fëanorian settlement on the northern shores of lake Mithrim, maw still besmirched with shreds of flesh from Morgoth’s rent neck, and let the Silmarils he carried in it drop at Curufin’s feet.

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt I wrote this for definitely deserves a more articulate story but I wanted to write something quick (I hope it's not too confusing). I might expand on it someday and/or write about the Elves' reactions to the whole mess. I had Carcharoth be the one to help Fëanor because I love wolves, and I dislike the traditional view of wolves = evil. Morgoth is not entirely dead (yet).


End file.
